Rent Strikes

There have been so few musicals in recent history that have been cultural touchstones. There was Oklahoma, the first modern musical. Then West Side Story really raised the stakes. By the 1970s, A Chorus Line changed the rules of the game, while the British mega-musicals — Cats, Phantom of the Opera, Les Miserables — set a new standard. When Jonathan Larson's Rent opened in 1996, after Larson's own untimely death, a new theatrical legend was born about a disparate group ...